Sunday, November 16, 2008

Under the Tuscan Sun

Sorry for the delay in blog updates. Unfortunately, I am still without a functioning laptop and am too nervous to take it anywhere here in Italy to get fixed.

My latest adventure was to Tuscany with 60 other students in my program. The pictures are more beautiful then I could ever explain or put into words (plus I am sick and just took some advil pm..haha) so I will just tell you the towns we went to and then share some pictures. We stayed in the beautiful town of Siena and also traveled to Montalcino (famous for red wine, specifically brunello and chianti classico) where we saw a beautiful castle, attended mass and saw the blessing of the tractors and enjoyed local cuisine! We also went to the town of Pienza bulit by Pope Pius II who was born there and adorned the town with very handsome buildings. In addition we had the opportunity to visit the Abbey of Sant'Antimo, one of the most beautiful Romanesque churches in Italy and also, where I took all the amazing Tuscany landscape photos. We were even able to witness one of their seven times a day of pray. The final town we visited was Arezzo where La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful with Roberto Benigni) was filmed. There we had a private tour inside the Basilica of San Francesco. We were able to see frescoes painted in 1452 and while we have seen many fresco paintings on our different trips, with this one we had a guide who explained everything so it made it that much more interesting.

Siena:

Montalcino:You might not be able to see it but that is a 4,700 euro bottle of wine!! YIKES!